Did not expect this.
Retail gaming giant who spurned PC gamers in the brick and mortar scene now buys Impulse!
Not sure what to expect really. I just hope Stardock keeps making great strategy games!
Now that Gamestop can servie you digital games in a more popular “package” AND offer live streamed games directly to your netbook/laptop/crappy desktop/TV… they might actually be able to compete with Steam.
Linky:
Realized my title is wrong. Gamestop (the game retailer) not Gamespot (the game website) purchased impulse.
Edited the title to correct typo.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re doing it just to cut them out. They can’t touch Steam or Direct2Drive, but Impulse and Spawn Labs still get some shares in the market.
There’s of course an off-chance that Gamestop has realized that brick&mortar stores will be dead in the next 5 years and are futureproofing themselves, but I’ve got $5 that says these companies will have their windows quietly boarded up.
Oh dear. I bought the DA:Origins/Awakening set through Impulse not too long ago. I wonder if I should consider getting a hard copy just in case something goes awry.
Seems much more likely that they’re looking to create Gamestop Online or some such; they probably still have enough name recognition to make a go at capturing some market share from Steam et al and buying an existing online game shop is probably cheaper/easier than creating one from scratch.
Bwuh? Trading in games online is still something the majority of gamers don’t do. They’ll be a big market for GameStop stores for a very long time.
Digital trade-ins would be a new feature to the market that would give them some traction, but I don’t imagine this going much of anywhere. I use impulse sometimes mostly because I respect stardock a lot for their philosophy, but without stardock I’m unlikely to bother unless they’ve got really killer deals. The prospect of buying games from gamestop these days just somehow seems unnatural.
I don’t know, makes me wonder if they’re going to go after steam full blast into the market or if this is some sort of token effort. They must have a hardon over the margins digital sales can give per unit.
I can’t imagine digital trade-ins. The benefit of trade-ins for the company is the fact that they can buy back your games for $5, and SELL THEM BACK to someone else for more. This model doesn’t make any sense in a digital sense, since it’s all just data anyway, “buying used” is meaningless (no disc scratches etc), so everybody would just buy used. Since it’s all data, the number of “used” games as opposed to “new” games is just an integer on a server somewhere, it would be nigh impossible to justify “oh yeah, this data is USED baby.” I suppose it could be like a “limited return” where you get a small amount of money for having the game wiped off your hard drive and being unable to redownload it but… I don’t see it working that well, yeah, being able to do that could make them a net profit, and encourage people to buy more games, but I doubt it would to any large extent (especially if they have to compete with Steam sale weekends and stuff).
I generally agree that it’s not all that plausible an idea, but I didn’t mean that they’d actually track individual used copies. I was thinking more along the lines of being able to return a game for store credit, and perhaps the publisher of the game you sold back gets a cut of whatever funds you use to buy the new games with, or something. I know there’s a small but vocal minority who screams about not being able to resell with digital distribution so I figured, since it’s Gamestop’s bread and butter, they might be the first major player to try to figure out a system.
I wouldn’t use it personally - I don’t mind the ability to not be able to resell because I view it as massively outweighed by getting games for so crazy cheap. I’d much rather be able to buy games for $5-10 and keep them forever than to buy them for $40-60 and be able to resell them for $10-20.
Gamefly (the rental service) bought out direct2drive now. WTF is going on? Apparently word of the digital distribution profit margins are getting around, but I can’t say I like any of this. The PC digital distribution market is great as is, we don’t need outside companies coming in and mucking around with things.
Why would you do that? Why not just wait and see if anything goes awry, and *then *get a hard copy? By that time, it’ll cost you far less.